Andrea's update - Fire and stairs

I'm looking at Fire in Tall Buildings, but I've found some handy contact information as well.

Research:
Review of archived press materials (New York Times, Newsday, Village Voice)
Review of NIST reports related to fire codes (WTC compliance and recommendations)
Collected FDNY documents related to past, current and proposed Fire Safety codes
Identifying possible primary sources from archived materials and reports and locating contact information

Possible contacts identified:
NIST lead investigator on WTC report– Sivaraj Shyam-Sunder, 301-975-6713, sivaraj.shyam-sunder@nist.gov

NIST senior engineer - Richard W. Bukowski, 301-975-6853, richard.bukowski@nist.gov - investigated Port Authority compliance with building codes

NYC Dept. of Buildings PIO - Jennifer Givner, 212-566-3473 – endorsed NIST findings against Port Authority

NYC Dept. of Buildings Commissioner – Patricia Lancaster – 212-566-3473

John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY, Department of Public Management Professor and advisor to NIST on Fire Management –
Glenn Corbett (212.237.8092, gcorbett@jjay.cuny.edu)

Port Authority Public Information Officer – Steve Coleman – 212-435-7777

Port Authority Public Affairs Director – John McCarthy – 212-435-7777

National Fire Protection Association: 617-984-7275
President - James Shannon –
NFPA Building Fire Protection and Life Safety -
Robert E. Solomon, Assistant Vice President and Jill T. McGovern, Secretary
NFPA Fire Protection Applications and Chemical Engineering - Guy R. Colonna, Assistant Vice President and Patti Mucci, Senior Technical Secretary

NFPA Public Fire Protection - Carl Peterson, Director and Stacey Van Zandt, Project Administrative Supervisor
NFPA Fire Analysis and Research - John R. Hall, Jr., Assistant Vice President and Helen J. Columbo, Secretary

Skyscraper Safety Campaign: http://www.skyscrapersafety.org/
Sally Regenhard, Chairperson; P. O. Box 70, Woodlawn Station, Bronx, NY 10470 - SallyR@SkyscraperSafety.org
AND
Monica Gabrielle, Co-Chairperson; P. O. Box 70, Woodlawn Station
Bronx, NY 10470 - monicagabrielle@earthlink.net

Notable information culled from materials:

Per NYT article: very few of recommendations from report after 1993 WTC bombing were effected by 9/11/01 - "It just didn't happen," said Patricia Lancaster, now the city buildings commissioner. NICE.

Per NYT article:
NYC building codes called for 4 staircases in each tower, but there were only 3 in each – total 6. 5 were destroyed by planes – one in south tower was used by at least 18 survivors.
“In the north tower, however, no one above the 91st floor was able to get out, even though about 1,000 are likely to have survived the impact of the hijacked airplane.”
- 4th staircases were required because Windows on the World (north tower) and observatory (south tower) had occupancy ratings over 1,000
- The Port Authority maintains that the stairway was not required.
The Port Authority is not bound by NYC codes, but claims to "meet or exceed"standards.
"On the issue of the fourth staircase, we will respectfully disagree with the N.I.S.T. findings and maintain that we met the city building codes in this area," said Steve Coleman, an agency spokesman.

Per NYT article: “Nationally, between 1989 and 1999, no more than five civilians were killed in 6,900 reported high-rise office building fires, according to statistics complied by the National Fire Protection Association.”

Per NYT article: “Dr. Sunder said that fully equipped firefighters - carrying nearly 100 pounds of gear up stairs - begin to reach their physiological limits about the 15th or 20th floor, and that it takes about two minutes to climb per floor. For people on the 60th floor of a building that has lost power, Dr. Sunder said, "help is actually a few hours away. We did not look at other buildings, but we are very confident in our recommendations."

And, a good summary of NIST findings by the NYT re: building design flaws and the staircase issue (I've edited below) - full story here:
“In a sobering lesson drawn from one of the day's great successes -- the escape of nearly everyone below the points of impact, about 14,000 people -- the report said that it had taken about twice as long to go down a single flight of stairs as had been projected by the current engineering standards for tall buildings. The buildings were only half full, investigators said, and if the attack had come at a time when they were filled to occupancy, the evacuation would not have been successful."

The impact changed tower structures in two critical ways... First, of the 47 columns in the core of each building, 9 were either severed or badly damaged in the north tower, and 11 in the south tower. Second, the impact dislodged the fireproofing that was sprayed on the floors and the columns. As the fires ignited by the jet fuel burned, the floors were weakened.

The floors played an important role in the structures, because they connected the exterior supports... to the columns hidden in the cores of the buildings. As the unprotected floors were weakened by fire, the exterior columns bowed inwards. In the north tower, they had moved 55 inches off center a few minutes before the collapse; in the south tower, they were 20 inches off center. As those columns became unstable, the building load shifted, but the instability was too great and the cascade of collapse began.

Much of the jet fuel burned outside the buildings in a fireball, but enough remained inside to ignite the office furnishings and building contents.

...the investigation ... raised serious questions about the adequacy of the original fireproofing applied to the steel in the towers. But in the areas where the fires were most severe, the amount of fireproofing that originally had been applied was ''moot'' because whatever had been there was knocked off by the planes.

During the design of the trade center, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had decided to use a new version of the city building code that did not require as many staircases as the earlier edition. Instead of six staircases, including a specially reinforced fire escape, the trade center had three stairs in each tower. The investigators determined, though, that even the liberalized code required a fourth staircase, to accommodate the more than 1,000 people expected in the restaurant at the top of the north tower and at the observation deck atop the south tower.

As an interstate agency, the Port Authority is not bound by local building codes, but it had publicly pledged to ''meet or exceed'' the city code in building the trade center. However, the institute investigators determined that the Port Authority had not supplied enough staircases.

One of the documents included in yesterday's report showed that the Port Authority was eager to cut down on the amount of space devoted to stairs.

''The tower core should be redesigned to eliminate the fire towers and to take advantage of the more lenient provisions regarding exit stairs,'' wrote Malcolm P. Levy, the Port Authority's chief planning engineer, who is now deceased.

In the impact area of the north tower, the three staircases were about 70 feet apart and were destroyed immediately.

In the south tower, the plane hit on floors where the three staircases were about 200 feet apart, and one of them survived at least partially intact.

Next questions:
What are current/proposed requirements regarding staircases, number and dimensions?
What are ideal (according to NIST and NFPA) standards?